Have been using this for years (yes, back to the DOS days), and picked it up as soon as it was available on Linux (I think back in the Slackware days!). Thanks for all you do for the Linux community!
Nice to give this some exposure. I still use this file manager. It can do much more then what you have shown here, but I understand that you can't make an hour long video. It can let you show the images, deal with archives, work with remote sites, like ftp, and copying files is very fast.
Another way to access the functions at the bottom if you don't have a mouse and your shell doesn't parse function keys properly is to hit the 'esc' key and 0-9, so if you wanted to quit then you'd type esc-0. Typing escape twice will back you out of menu functions if you decide you don't want to do it. I've been using the two Commanders (Norton and Midnight) for decades. It's a handy tool, for those of us who just can't do everything from the cli There's also a gui file manager with similar function keys, dual panes and many other commonalities called Krusader
I've used mc, (Norton Commander) for years. Great program. Another I like is joe, (this is like WordStar, (which can edit multiple files at once)! The TAB key will also switch between the Panes. You can also FTP from inside mc.
Thanks for reminding us about this File Manager; also if you use Micro Text editor it makes it easy, if you don't use vim or emacs as a defauly text editor. If you use Gnome there is a Gnome Extension called DDTERM (Drop Down Terminal) you just press F12 to drop down a terminal then us mc with that, quite nifty and easy.
Also 1 tip you can press CTRL-o to turn off panel then you can see the shell terminal, so if you execute a shell command you can see it. Thanks for telling us about LYNX motions in settings. Is there a way to Select/Unselect single files? I tried shift-alt-* to select all. With other File managers I just press SPACE BAR to select/unselect. I tried also that alt-shift-+ and alt-shift- - but need to type the whole filename, is there a key to copy the filename text to this alt-shift-+ text box? I figured out you use RIGHT MOUSE button, hmm.
That title it's a very bit risky with Yazi in the game but whatever.. for sure so many people will mention it at the comments. Maybe a future video comparing Yazi and MC?
For a terminal window, without having a graphical UI, this makes sense. But for a File Manager (if you have a GUI), I prefer Krusader much, much more. It is similar to TotalCommander, which unfortunately is not available for Unix/Linux.
I cannot use Linux without Midnight Commander or Windows without Total Commander, one great feature is when you press enter on a tar or tgz file it opens up and you can use it just like a folder, CTRL+P to hide MC temporary to run console commands and see the result, CTRL+P to get back again, there is a lot of cool features once you start digging around.
A mc setup is personal, so when you do sudo mc it does not use your config. Want to start up the 2 panes in chosen directories (good for adding to bash script) , mc /path/to/dir1 /path/to/dir2 would show the 2 folders, mc ~/Videos /media/$USER/ would show user's Videos folder and user's usb storage top folder ctrl + u swaps panes, if you want the source to be on the left, destination on the right (but opened/selected folders in reverse) control x d q quickly compares 2 panes, shows which files are different on both sides
Ah, MC. I'll admit that I never use it, but it is a good program. My problem is that, on the desktop, I have no need for it; and when I open a terminal, my first instinct is to navigate using cd and ls. So it just kind of goes unused.
More in-depth feature vid of MC would be cool. I was expecting this to go way deeper. I haven't looked into MC in Linux, but I'm aware of it and it looks really close to age old Norton Commander I used as kid.
Kewl. Installed (via macports). Nice shell utility that I expect to use often. Love the old school dual pane file managers, though I'll always miss DirOpus on Amiga as the king of the hill. 😉 Back when I was more Linux than Mac I did find a very nice, highly customizable dirOpus style file tool called _Worker_ that had a TCL based GUI. I even wrote a bash macro for it that did pattern matched multi-file rename for my media work. Just looked and found it's still available and supported - v 5.10 released 2024/07 - GPL FLOSS from boomerangs world .
As a new Linux user it would be helpful to tell me what MC can do, or simply do better, than what’s installed on Mint, Nemo. I tried 10 things I always do on both, granted they were fairly basic tasks, and Nemo seemed easier. Or, more familiar coming from windows. Do any of these file managers offer a preview pane? I sometimes hate it on windows but for some tasks it’s great. Love the channel. So much content I can usually find a video (or two) about what I need help with.
F3 -> view file, F4-> Edit... And you can even chose to edit with the internal editor or another editor (like nano). One can't have a simpler way of manipulating text files!
Thank you for the video. It took Thunar 10h to copy 128GB while the Midnight Commander did it in 2h 45m. That's 3.63 times faster! The only problem was I did it in background mode and there was no progress bar. Does anyone know how to bring up the progress bar in background copy mode?
The pull-down menus show the corresponding keyboard shortcuts for the commands but the keys displayed are somewhat confusing. Many commands show "C-" and then a letter which I intuitively guessed that it's a control key. I think it would have been more appropriate to display "CTRL" instead of just "C". I guess if they wanted to not waste characters in the UI, they could have used the "^" key since the circumflex character has a history of standing in for the control key. The thing I'm really confused about are the commands that start with "M-". I don't understand what the "M" key refers to. My first guess was the ALT key and my second guess was the Super key, neither of which functioned.
The keyboard abbreviations are the same as are used in Emacs. You might have heard of it:) M- is Meta, it is typically Alt or RightAlt. If you tap the Escape key once and release it, it will usually treat the next key as being modified by the Meta key. Hitting Escape a second time usually has the expected effect of canceling what you were doing. (Some keyboards use Alt for Compose instead of Meta. This can usually be switched in your terminal preferences.)
Norton Commander was the best! and only, because if you switch off the 2 split screens, you could SEEE what you write, and so on.. on all the current fiilemanager you cant. yoou can switch the splits screens off, .... that makes no sense, and that was the only feature why I used ist. later it was du slow, because it was 16 bit, and copying files takese for ever. currently, when I use one, then I take total commander. thats the best one as far as i know, hat's currently available.
"apt install mc" is basically the most useful linux command I know, LOL PS. I still don't understand why on Earth the old (and wonderfully perfect) DOS Turbo Editor wasn't ported on linux, but instead people prefer using nano or, worse, that horrible vi(m)
I actually use total commender a lot. It is, in my opinion, the best file manager ever created. Trying to switch to midnight commander is very frustrating. So many things are missing there. I think I prefer to use the bare command line. It would be brilliant if something similar was developed for linux (maybe even something that would work in a graphical desktop).
I am getting "cannot execute binary file: Exec format error" when trying to open .mp4 file. MKV opens just fine. Celluloid as default video player, Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS. Is there any fix for this? Tnx for the help.
It sounds like mc is trying to execute the file instead of opening it. mc doesn't use xdg-open. Typically, if it doesn't know how to open something, it will default to a default viewer/editor unless it has the executable bit set, in which case it attempts to execute it. Traditionally, *nix scripts have a #! that tells the OS which interpreter to use on the script, so it works well. You can test if this is happening by doing a "chmod a-x foo.mp4" and trying it again.
I have noticed that in /etc/mc/mc.ext.ini under the [mp4] there is this "Regex=\.(mp4|m4v|mpe?g)$". I have changed it to "Regex=.mp4" to match the formats that mc opens fine. Now it works. Opens the file like a charm. If you know why, please explain.
A bit too elementary. Why encourage mouse use for a CLI file manager that you might be using remotely? It warranted a mention and that was about all. "Ctrl+I", really? There were keyboards made without tab keys, but if you have a mouse, you probably have a tab key, they've been on most keyboards for the last 40 years.
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
I remember Norton Commander from the ancient days of DOS. This looks like a great replacement for that. Some of us still miss the old ways. ;)
apt-get install far2l
thank me later
Have been using this for years (yes, back to the DOS days), and picked it up as soon as it was available on Linux (I think back in the Slackware days!). Thanks for all you do for the Linux community!
Nice to give this some exposure. I still use this file manager. It can do much more then what you have shown here, but I understand that you can't make an hour long video. It can let you show the images, deal with archives, work with remote sites, like ftp, and copying files is very fast.
Another way to access the functions at the bottom if you don't have a mouse and your shell doesn't parse function keys properly is to hit the 'esc' key and 0-9, so if you wanted to quit then you'd type esc-0. Typing escape twice will back you out of menu functions if you decide you don't want to do it.
I've been using the two Commanders (Norton and Midnight) for decades. It's a handy tool, for those of us who just can't do everything from the cli
There's also a gui file manager with similar function keys, dual panes and many other commonalities called Krusader
escape + number only useful on usa style keyboard, others might need to add shift to get the number.
Most important info here! Thx
Thanks for reminding me, that mc exists. I always used Norton Commander on DOS but somehow did not remember mc is there. Nice video, thank you!
I've used mc, (Norton Commander) for years. Great program. Another I like is joe, (this is like WordStar, (which can edit multiple files at once)! The TAB key will also switch between the Panes. You can also FTP from inside mc.
jstarian in the house!
Yeah man, finally. When i started with linux some decades ago, i was so happy there was a good norton commander clone😄
The most underrated terminal utility! I use it since '97
Thanks for reminding us about this File Manager; also if you use Micro Text editor it makes it easy, if you don't use vim or emacs as a defauly text editor. If you use Gnome there is a Gnome Extension called DDTERM (Drop Down Terminal) you just press F12 to drop down a terminal then us mc with that, quite nifty and easy.
Also 1 tip you can press CTRL-o to turn off panel then you can see the shell terminal, so if you execute a shell command you can see it. Thanks for telling us about LYNX motions in settings. Is there a way to Select/Unselect single files? I tried shift-alt-* to select all. With other File managers I just press SPACE BAR to select/unselect. I tried also that alt-shift-+ and alt-shift- - but need to type the whole filename, is there a key to copy the filename text to this alt-shift-+ text box? I figured out you use RIGHT MOUSE button, hmm.
It is a shame that this app isn't installed on every major distro. I love mc, it is small fast and easy to use!
That title it's a very bit risky with Yazi in the game but whatever.. for sure so many people will mention it at the comments. Maybe a future video comparing Yazi and MC?
Excellent. I've been wanting to learn how to use it more.
As a fan of Double Commander, this is awesome
For a terminal window, without having a graphical UI, this makes sense. But for a File Manager (if you have a GUI), I prefer Krusader much, much more. It is similar to TotalCommander, which unfortunately is not available for Unix/Linux.
I cannot use Linux without Midnight Commander or Windows without Total Commander, one great feature is when you press enter on a tar or tgz file it opens up and you can use it just like a folder, CTRL+P to hide MC temporary to run console commands and see the result, CTRL+P to get back again, there is a lot of cool features once you start digging around.
LOL, same! :-)
I started using it 25 of 30 years ago.
Used Norton Commander when I was a kid. Now my go to file manager in Linux is VIFM.
yeah, mc is great , and reliable , i haven't had any issues with it for as long as i can remember
thanks Jay, great video. Nice that off the bat hidden directory's are shown.
A mc setup is personal, so when you do sudo mc it does not use your config. Want to start up the 2 panes in chosen directories (good for adding to bash script) ,
mc /path/to/dir1 /path/to/dir2 would show the 2 folders, mc ~/Videos /media/$USER/ would show user's Videos folder and user's usb storage top folder
ctrl + u swaps panes, if you want the source to be on the left, destination on the right (but opened/selected folders in reverse)
control x d q quickly compares 2 panes, shows which files are different on both sides
Great video. Yet another addition to improve my workflow.
i recently discovered midnight commander using my rpi zero 2w in minimal, and ive been looking for some good tutorials for it 👍
great video, indeed been using mc since 99 always made sure it was installed on all my rig
mc is among the first things I install on any new linux install. Not only for the file manager, but also for the mcedit editor.
Thanks for covering this tool.
What sort of monster uses horizontal split ? 😂😂
Also, imo, you missed a killer feature, that you can browse remote file systems
Thank you for this tour of this tool.
Ah, MC. I'll admit that I never use it, but it is a good program. My problem is that, on the desktop, I have no need for it; and when I open a terminal, my first instinct is to navigate using cd and ls. So it just kind of goes unused.
Great video 🎉🎉
More in-depth feature vid of MC would be cool. I was expecting this to go way deeper. I haven't looked into MC in Linux, but I'm aware of it and it looks really close to age old Norton Commander I used as kid.
Ya, I heard about before too, but never took it serious. DirectoryOpus was great back on the Amiga; wow back in 1990.
What config are you using for your terminal prompt? I've been wanting to use a similar prompt ascetic.
Thanks for the video
Good for you on your products. Very nice. I use Debian, Of Course!
Kewl. Installed (via macports). Nice shell utility that I expect to use often. Love the old school dual pane file managers, though I'll always miss DirOpus on Amiga as the king of the hill. 😉
Back when I was more Linux than Mac I did find a very nice, highly customizable dirOpus style file tool called _Worker_ that had a TCL based GUI. I even wrote a bash macro for it that did pattern matched multi-file rename for my media work. Just looked and found it's still available and supported - v 5.10 released 2024/07 - GPL FLOSS from boomerangs world .
Thank you for your video 🤩
As a new Linux user it would be helpful to tell me what MC can do, or simply do better, than what’s installed on Mint, Nemo.
I tried 10 things I always do on both, granted they were fairly basic tasks, and Nemo seemed easier. Or, more familiar coming from windows.
Do any of these file managers offer a preview pane? I sometimes hate it on windows but for some tasks it’s great.
Love the channel. So much content I can usually find a video (or two) about what I need help with.
Reminds me of XTree Pro. Wonder which one came first 🤔
Looks great, thank you. 👍🏻
mcedit is also part of the mc and is a nice simple editor
F3 -> view file, F4-> Edit... And you can even chose to edit with the internal editor or another editor (like nano). One can't have a simpler way of manipulating text files!
Love your videos.
I love mc, but I usually use Double Commander on Linux and Windows.
Finally MC 🤩
Just a quick note you can get MC for Mac and Windows too.
Any idea why those bash-history-....tmp files appear?
The best orthodox file manager for Linux is far2l, reimplementation of FAR manager v.2, and the best console file manager is nnn.
Thank you for the video. It took Thunar 10h to copy 128GB while the Midnight Commander did it in 2h 45m. That's 3.63 times faster! The only problem was I did it in background mode and there was no progress bar. Does anyone know how to bring up the progress bar in background copy mode?
Is it compatible with FAR on the level of the keyboard command.
The pull-down menus show the corresponding keyboard shortcuts for the commands but the keys displayed are somewhat confusing. Many commands show "C-" and then a letter which I intuitively guessed that it's a control key. I think it would have been more appropriate to display "CTRL" instead of just "C". I guess if they wanted to not waste characters in the UI, they could have used the "^" key since the circumflex character has a history of standing in for the control key. The thing I'm really confused about are the commands that start with "M-". I don't understand what the "M" key refers to. My first guess was the ALT key and my second guess was the Super key, neither of which functioned.
The keyboard abbreviations are the same as are used in Emacs. You might have heard of it:) M- is Meta, it is typically Alt or RightAlt. If you tap the Escape key once and release it, it will usually treat the next key as being modified by the Meta key. Hitting Escape a second time usually has the expected effect of canceling what you were doing. (Some keyboards use Alt for Compose instead of Meta. This can usually be switched in your terminal preferences.)
mc is cool but i prefer yazi. it's cleaner and you can use vim motions.
there is undo command in mc?
Norton Commander was the best! and only, because if you switch off the 2 split screens, you could SEEE what you write, and so on.. on all the current fiilemanager you cant. yoou can switch the splits screens off, .... that makes no sense, and that was the only feature why I used ist. later it was du slow, because it was 16 bit, and copying files takese for ever. currently, when I use one, then I take total commander. thats the best one as far as i know, hat's currently available.
I use MC a lot
Thanks
"apt install mc" is basically the most useful linux command I know, LOL
PS. I still don't understand why on Earth the old (and wonderfully perfect) DOS Turbo Editor wasn't ported on linux, but instead people prefer using nano or, worse, that horrible vi(m)
Good stuff
have you checked out yazi?
Cool. Need more advanced.
I actually use total commender a lot. It is, in my opinion, the best file manager ever created. Trying to switch to midnight commander is very frustrating. So many things are missing there. I think I prefer to use the bare command line. It would be brilliant if something similar was developed for linux (maybe even something that would work in a graphical desktop).
It is, is called Double Commander. I am using for many years in Windows and in Linux, as well. It has a ton of options.
Agree, the first thing I install on any Windows machine is Total commander (well, I need to replace Edge first of course), you don't need much else ;)
I am getting "cannot execute binary file: Exec format error" when trying to open .mp4 file. MKV opens just fine. Celluloid as default video player, Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS. Is there any fix for this? Tnx for the help.
It sounds like mc is trying to execute the file instead of opening it. mc doesn't use xdg-open. Typically, if it doesn't know how to open something, it will default to a default viewer/editor unless it has the executable bit set, in which case it attempts to execute it. Traditionally, *nix scripts have a #! that tells the OS which interpreter to use on the script, so it works well. You can test if this is happening by doing a "chmod a-x foo.mp4" and trying it again.
@@mikechappell4156 Now it doesn't report the error. Nothing happens.
I have noticed that in /etc/mc/mc.ext.ini under the [mp4] there is this "Regex=\.(mp4|m4v|mpe?g)$". I have changed it to "Regex=.mp4" to match the formats that mc opens fine. Now it works. Opens the file like a charm. If you know why, please explain.
@@dexheavy85 What OS are you running? I have /etc/mc/mc.ext on my system. but, .ini suggests windows to me, which may not handle the regex correctly.
@@mikechappell4156 I wrote above. Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
ive been using lf but i dont even use it. if i need a file manager then i use the gui one, but i barely need to use it lol i just fzf everything
ranger feels way simpler and direct to the point.
or mc -b
❤❤
I do think there are better options nowadays, lf example for is more lightweight, lets you write keybinds with bash scripts and has vim keybinds.
first
A bit too elementary. Why encourage mouse use for a CLI file manager that you might be using remotely? It warranted a mention and that was about all. "Ctrl+I", really? There were keyboards made without tab keys, but if you have a mouse, you probably have a tab key, they've been on most keyboards for the last 40 years.
how is this the best terminal file manager? that title belongs to Yazi in my opinion...at least from what I've seen and used so far!
It is probably the best known, cross platform terminal based file manager.
lol it stuck in 90's...are you insane?